Duty of Submission to Discipline Motives to Performance of Filial Duties Nature and proper Authority of Civil Government Submission to its Authority-how far this Duty ex- Circumstances in which the Relation of a Slaveholder may not be Sinful MORAL PHILOSOPHY. INTRODUCTION. NATURE, SOURCES, AND OBJECTS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 1. DR. WAYLAND defines Moral Philosophy to be the science of Moral Law. Dr. Paley describes it as that science which teaches men their duty, and the reasons of it. Dr. Spring represents it to be the science which treats of the nature of human actions, of the motives and laws which govern them, and of the ends to which they ought to be directed. 2. As a science, Moral Philosophy must be founded upon just views of our moral constitution, and of the various relations which we sustain toward other beings and things. 3. While to some extent the study of man and his relations may enable a philosopher to construct an accurate system of morals, all experience has shown that no philosopher has adequately succeeded, without resorting for aid to the perfect system of duty contained in the holy scriptures. If, therefore, our object be, not to test the ingenuity and superiority of human reason, but to supply ourselves with a correct, explicit, comprehensive, and reliable exposition of human duty, also with the reasons upon which it is founded, and the highest motives for its performance, we should apply ourselves not to the researches of human reason only, but to those infallible instructions which our benevolent Creator has kindly furnished, in condescension to our ignorance, perverseness, and errors. Indeed, it is too late in the day for educated men in Christian lands, to be able to ascertain how far the unassisted faculties of man can go, in acquiring a knowledge of the A 2 MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY INSEPARABLE. foundation and the rules of moral action; for the prominent principles of Christian morality are so interwoven into the opinions, intercourse, and practices of modern civilized society, and so familiar to the mind of every man educated in a Christian land, that it is impossible to eradicate the ideas of them from the mind, when it attempts to trace the duty of man solely on the principles of reason. When the true principles of morality are once communicated and understood through the medium of revelation, reason can demonstrate their utility and their conformity to the character of God, to the order of the universe, and to the relations which subsist among intelligent agents. But we are by no means in a situation to determine whether they could ever have been discovered and clearly established by the investigations of the unassisted powers of the human mind. This point will come under review again, and be more fully discussed. 4. Moral philosophers have justly been described by Foster, as for the most part seeming anxious to avoid everything that might subject them to the appellation of Christian divines. They have regarded their department as a science complete in itself; and they investigate the foundation of morality, define its laws, and affix its sanctions, in a manner generally so distinct from Christianity, that the reader would almost conclude that religion to be, another science complete in itself. 5. An entire separation of Moral Philosophy from Christianity it is hardly possible to maintain; since the latter has decided some moral questions on which reason was dubious or silent; and since that final retribution which the New Testament has so luminously foreshown, is evidently the greatest of sanctions. To make no reference, while inculcating moral principles, to a judgment to come, on what has been confessed to be divine authority, would look like systematic irreligion. But still it is striking to observe how small a portion of the ideas which distin guish the New Testament from other books many moral philosophers have thought indispensable to a theory in which they professed to include the sum of the duty and interests of man. A serious reader is constrained to feel either that there is too much in that book, or too little in theirs. On the whole it must be concluded that there |